Friday, April 06, 2007

Kentucky is set to announce Billy Gillispie as their next head coach today to replace Tubby Smith. Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart moved quickly on the search once it was apparent yesterday that Billy Donovan was staying at Florida.

I first read about Billy Gillispie a couple of weeks ago when his team was in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament. He had a great track record of building winners out of the two schools where he had coached, UTEP and Texas A&M, neither of which were basketball powers. Then I came across this article about how obsessed he is with coaching to the point of seeming unhealthy. After reading it I hoped Kentucky could either land Donovan or would go with Villanova's Jay Wright. But after following the fanatical UK fans' obsession over this coaching search -- complete with private plane tracking through the FAA website and real estate speculation about potential coaches buying horse farms -- I decided that maybe what an obsessed fan base truly needs is an obsessed coach to lead the basketball program. We'll see. Go Big Blue!

"Texas A&M Coach Billy Gillispie drinks Dr Pepper for breakfast, does not know his sister’s last name and is so tough on his players that his mother swears that she would never play for him."

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"Gillispie said he feels more adjusted in College Station than he did in El Paso, here his life was so unbalanced that his house was barely furnished. When he held a selection Sunday gathering in March at his house in El Paso, the Christmas tree was still up. Still, he knows he spends more nights dissecting film than hanging out with friends."